Winter fishing through a layer of ice covering a river or lake usually involves drilling a hole in the ice and dropping a fishing line with one or a plurality of hooks through the hole. While this mode of winter fishing often satisfies the sportsman, the commercial fisherman or person relying on fishing as a source of food must find a way of catching a larger quantity of fish than is possible using the aforementioned method.
In a traditional under ice net fishing technique, a pair of holes are drilled a distance apart in the ice, and a rope is hooked to a long rod which is pushed through one hole toward the other. A second hook is lowered through the second hole, by which the rope is grasped and drawn up. By drilling a series of holes, the rope can be maneuvered substantially across the whole or part of a river under the ice, entering the river through the first hole and exiting at the final one. One corner of a net is than tied to one end of the rope, and the other end of the rope is pulled, drawing the net through one hole and into the river, thus being deployed below the ice, often extending between the two end holes. When the net is full, or at the option of the user, the net is drawn back up through the hole through which it was deployed, drawing the rope along with it. In this manner the same pair of holes can be used all winter long.
While using the conventional under ice net fishing technique has proven successful, it has been found difficult, tedious and time consuming to drill the series of holes and to draw the fish net rope under the ice initially. Sometimes one end of the rope is lost in the water, requiring its withdrawal. Further, working with a wet rope in freezing weather is uncomfortable and difficult.
Canadian Patent No. 1,217,471 teaches a crawler for drawing a rope from a hole in lake or river ice under the ice. The crawler includes a structure for stopping, fixing its horizontal location and generating a sound which can be heard above the ice whereby its location can be determined. A second hole can then be drilled in the ice between the crawler and the first hole and the rope can be hooked and drawn out with the crawler. The rope can then be used as a “fish” for deployment of a net under the ice for winter fishing. The crawler is made up of a float, a pair of skids above the float, a motor driven propeller, a switch operated by a jerk of the rope to kill the motor and a clapper for generating a knocking sound by repetitive jerking of the rope. When the crawler is pulled backwards slightly, a pick is deployed by friction with the ice for fixing its horizontal position.
While the prior art crawler certainly improves the ease with which an under ice net can be deployed over the conventional methods, there is still room for improvement. Particularly, the switching arrangement used to activate and deactivate the motor is mounted just beneath the trailing edge of a deck of the float body so as to be actuable to cut the motor by a jerk of the rope after a desired length thereof has been deployed. To prevent potential injury to the user, the switch should only be turned on after deployment of the crawler into the water through the hole in the ice, thereby requiring the use of a rod or other elongate tool to reach down through the ice to flip the switch. The positioning of the switch and the arrangement of rope and springs proximate thereto to effect turning off of the switch under jerking of the rope may make it difficult to flip the switch to the on position using the rod, especially considering that the crawler may move about somewhat once submerged and that a clear view of the switch from above the ice may be obscured.